I feel like not enough attention is being paid to Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) saying that Republicans in Congress are being blackmailed by Russian operatives using hookers and drugs to get them to change their votes on legislation.
That guy’s a bit of a nut. On the other hand, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard this sort of thing. Remember this?
A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.
Before the conversation, McCarthy and Ryan had emerged from separate talks at the Capitol with Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladimir Groysman, who had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut Eastern European democratic institutions.
News had just broken the day before in The Washington Post that Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee, prompting McCarthy to shift the conversation from Russian meddling in Europe to events closer to home.
Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”
Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”
And they wonder how anyone could have fallen for the pee tape rumor….
Is there any truth to this? Who knows? Would I be surprised if it were true. Not a bit. The GOP is that corrupt. Look who they worship like a god.
Nina Burleigh has written a great piece for TNR about Joe Biden’s other opponent in the 2024 election: Fox News. I urge you to read the whole thing if you can. It will be worth your while.
It opens with this:
On October 6, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report for September. The numbers were extremely positive, with 336,000 jobs added, almost double the forecast. Most media outlets were reporting the numbers as a sign of improvement in the economy—which they are. But Fox reported otherwise. On his prime-time show that night, host Jesse Watters called the report “a straight-up scandal.” He accused the Biden administration of “cherry-picking and double counting the numbers.” As he babbled, chyrons drove home the point in capital letters, for anyone watching with the sound down, in, say, a bar or a gym: “Biden’s Jobs Numbers Scandal” and “Biden’s Economy Is Smoke & Mirrors.”
That day, the network flooded all its zones with the same shade. A Fox Business segment hosted Strategic Wealth Partners “investment strategist” Luke Lloyd, who opined that the good numbers merely proved Joe Biden’s socialism. “My reaction? We are becoming a more socialistic country, and these job numbers prove it,” he said. “We’re taking jobs from the private sector and creating them in the public sector. And who’s financing those jobs? Me, you, and the viewers, through inflation…. Government spending is going to keep inflation in the game.”
All that was just Day One. For the next week, the network served up a chorus of boos for the unemployment numbers. The next morning, hosts of Fox & Friends Weekenddiscussed the U.S. employment data over a chyron announcing, “Biden Criticized Over Handling of Economy.” Host Will Cain reported that the good jobs numbers were actually very bad news in a period of “runaway inflation,” and that more people working was simply going to drive up prices even further. “I got to tell you, when I’m out there talking to friends who are either in real estate or financing, there’s a great amount of fear about this economy and what could happen over the next 12 months … inflation goes high and interest rates goes high.”
As we head into the 2024 election, this is the messaging tone we can expect the nation’s most-watched cable network to spew hourly. No matter who the Republicans run, Fox will exist as an open adversary to Joe Biden—his other opponent. The network has always gone after Democrats—it did this to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Al Gore. But this election year is different. It is a crisis for American democracy, a crisis that is in no small part Fox’s making. And it’s not clear that Democrats have any plan for how to handle their other—perhaps even the stronger—2024 adversary.
[…]
Is the Biden campaign, are the Democrats generally, ready for this? A debate rages right now in Democratic circles about how the party and its officials should deal with Fox—to refuse to appear on the network and instead expose the corruption at its heart, or to play ball with it and try to outsmart it. There are good arguments on both sides. Wherever Biden and his people come down, they need to do so understanding that Fox isn’t merely an unfriendly media property. It’s an opponent, and one with a press pass and the First Amendment to shield its lies.
It’s straight-up lies and propaganda. And you wonder why people are so uninformed in this country. But it’s that last bit that’s immediately concerning.
Most media observers and critics say that unless you are as skilled as Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom it’s probably best not to go on at all. It’s very important to know how to parry their narrative and not everyone can do it. Others disagree pointing out that 40% of independents watch Fox and that the messaging around social security and medicare needs to be shared with the seniors who are watching Fox non-stop.
I honestly don’t know who’s right on this. “Better media training” has been the mantra for as long as I can remember but I’m not sure it’s ever made a difference. And do those seniors who watch Fox will ever believe that Trump and the Republicans will do anything to harm them. Fox blames everything on the Democrats and the hippies no matter what the truth might be!
It is possible to persuade them but the question is how to get it done
A 2022 experiment bears that out to some extent. Researchers paid Fox viewers to watch CNN for just a month—and they changed their minds about things like the government response to Covid and Democrats’ attitudes toward police. But in the real world, with such experiments impossible on a large scale, Democrats in 2024 face the profound challenge of meeting a moment of fascist authoritarian descent at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to messaging.
Burleigh correctly observes that Fox and the Republicans have discovered how to make politics “entertaining” whether it’s as theatre or sporting competition (or maybe lynching?) for the GOP voters who prefer this way of experiencing politics. According to various studies, Democrats apparently prefer to have their political entertainment more policy oriented. The result is that Fox viewers are extremely uniformed. Surprise! And the MSM is more boring…
We’ve all talked about this for years and I’m not sure there are any good answers for it, even now. When I think about it, it’s kind of a miracle that Democrats have managed to win all these elections in the last few years. Maybe that’s a hopeful sign?
Burleigh takes a long look at some of the long term work the Democrats are doing from building local news infrastructure (which sounds very interesting) to legal strategies, boycotts and carriage fees, all of which point to some clear signs that Fox, for all its power, is actually a very “wounded beast.” and may have actually reached the apex of its power some time back. That’s the most optimistic take I’ve seen and it does have a ring of truth. The problem is that they are still massively influential, dedicated to Donald Trump and they aren’t going anywhere before this next election.
So, add Fox to the list of Biden opponents, along with Trump, RFK Jr., Jill Stein and Cornell West. It may be the hardest one to beat out of all of them.
Republicans have a real problem when it comes to simple questions about the civil war and slavery. Nikki Haley got caught in a major gaffe yesterday in New Hampshire but Ron DeSantis has a lot of nerve dinging her for it though. He’s the guy who said defended a high school AP curriculum that said slavery helped enslaved Black people develop skills that could be applied for their personal benefit. Please.
Here’s the whole Haley exchange:
This isn’t hard. As Ron Brownstein pointed out, “South Carolina’s 1860 proclamation outlining its reasons for seceding from the Union mentions slavery in its opening sentence & points to the ‘increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery’ as a reason for the state” seceding.”
She tried to clean it up today. First, she said it was a Democratic plant in the audience, as if that would make a difference. And she also said this:
“Of course the Civil War was about slavery … But it was also more than that. It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government.”
Hmm. “The freedoms of every individual” in this context would include the freedom of white people to own slaves. “The role of government” would be the role of government to allow the ownership of other human beings. She’s still not willing to speak the simple truth and is instead channeling the old Lost Cause narrative that the civil war was about the “principle” of states’ rights.
Haley should know better. She has a history with this stuff as the Gov. of S. Carolina.
“As she ran for governor in 2010, Haley, in an interview…described the war as between two disparate sides fighting for “tradition” and “change” and said the Confederate flag was “not something that is racist.”
Apparently, the story hit all the airwaves in New Hampshire last night. It wasn’t exactly a confederate state. It illustrates a central problem for the GOP — there are a lot of racists in the party and they demand to be catered to. But if you aren’t Trump (who’s allowed to vomit up anything and people in the party will excuse it) you’d better be able to smoothly dog whistle your way through it in places where Republicans prefer their racism to be more subtle. Haley just failed that test.
“Why Trump’s ‘Kubrick Stare’ mugshot is straight out of the horror film playbook” – via The Telegraph
The man spends (how much?) time, bronzer and hairspray on himself each morning before going to work late. He had to have daily presidential security briefings dumbed down to maps and bullet points because he has a short attention span for anything not Donald Trump. He has other priorities (which don’t include personal hygiene).
But question his star power (or his liquidity) and you have his full attention.
Donald Trump kept the Christmas spirit going strong on Wednesday when he used his Truth Social account to go after the director of Home Alone and Home Alone 2 for suggesting in an interview that he “bullied” his way into a now-iconic cameo in the 1992 sequel.
Just as Trump has frequently accused special prosecutor Jack Smith of having a fake name, the former president suggested the same of Chris Columbus as he disputed the director’s claims about how his appearance during a scene at the Plaza hotel, which he owned at the time, came to be.
“30 years ago (how time flies!), Chris Columbus, and others, were begging me to make a cameo appearance in Home Alone 2,” Trump wrote, claiming he was “very busy” and “didn’t want to do it” but because they were so “persistent” he agreed “and the rest is history!”
Trump focusing on the big issies like the director of Home Alone 2 saying mean things about him. pic.twitter.com/thu2Nh2DYp
Over the holiday weekend, Columbus told Business Insider that the production paid to film in the Plaza lobby, but there was one condition.
“‘The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie,’” he recalled Trump saying. “So we agreed to put him in the movie, and when we screened it for the first time the oddest thing happened: People cheered when Trump showed up on-screen. So I said to my editor, ‘Leave him in the movie. It’s a moment for the audience.’ But he did bully his way into the movie.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Trump shot back on Wednesday. “That cameo helped make the movie a success, but if they felt bullied, or didn’t want me, why did they put me in, and keep me there, for over 30 years?”
The idea of removing Trump from the film has come up before, such as just after the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021 when someone on Twitter proposed a “petition to digitally replace” Trump in Home Alone 2 with 40-year-old Macaulay Culkin, to which the actor replied, “Sold.”
“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution,” Trump told CPAC in March.
I’m giving space this morning to the youngest Democratic state chair in the country. One year ago, Anderson Clayton, a 2020 Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy McGrath field organizer took on “the powers that be” in the N.C. Democratic Party. She ran for state chair at 25. And won. Last night, she looked back on that decision (on the hellsite).
(Full disclosure: I’m a friend and a fan. Clayton consulted with me for 3-1/2 hrs weeks before announcing her run. She did everything I recommended and more, including getting an early start. I funded a chunk of her campaign and watched it unfold as the only supporter over 35 on her campaign Slack.)
I was terrified when we launched. Folks didn’t understand why we wanted to get into the race so early, and everyone I talked to about running told me, “The race is in February. Why are you thinking about it now?” It was December. Because we knew by being the youngest, people…
We sent out mailers(!) that were made possible by donations (!) we got because during call time we didn’t just call folks within the party, we made sure to test my ability to raise money. Because the number one critique we got was that “young folks can’t raise money.” pic.twitter.com/4qVggRGzuj
(Since winning the chair, Clayton has appeared on television, in national newspaper profiles, and raised funds across the country.)
That was when a certain state senator named @MikeWoodard endorsed me in the race. It was a moment of all moments, and it gave the idea and the thought that we could really win this thing to so many folks on the ground. And to me, it was such a brave thing.
I’m hoping that after this year we’ve done just a little bit to prove to folks that it was the right thing to trust a young person with this responsibility.
And that young folks can be some of the most creative, talented, and resourceful places of energy for our party…
I see our party’s future every time I speak to a group of teen Dems, young Dems, or unaffiliated young folks who feel disaffected from our party right now, but know that they’re pro-choice voters, or climate voters, or gun-violence prevention voters. I see it all around.
I know I still have so much to prove next year. I’m celebrating today though, because we took a risk. And it paid off. I hope every young person out there who feels scared or like they shouldn’t run for office, or challenge the status quo – will take this as a sign to do it.
Also PLUG: help a girl with an end of year deadline bc I want my fundraising numbers so strong in January for 2023 that folks can never say again young people can’t raise money! If we work hard, we can! 💪✨🫶 #ncpolhttps://t.co/xAbzz8hrgL
If anyone is going to redeem the global climate and our reeling democracy, it’s not going to be the generations that oversaw bringing the world to this crisis. Fixing what needs fixing is not going to come from a dial-tested three-word slogan or a dead-on-arrival five-point progressive policy. Most political work is not an intellectual exercise or showing out in yet another street protest featuring decades-old chants. It’s grunt work. Endless grunt work. If you’re not prepared for that kind of organizing, stand aside and let those with the passion for it do it. They’re likely 40 years younger.
I have nothing but respect for Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and her career of accomplishments. I still want her to go home and make room for fresh talent to move up. She can take Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn with her. Their party will be stronger for it.
“It’s not [your, his, her, their] turn” is a party culture (another local tale about beating that here) that has little to do with talent. It wasn’t Barack Obama’s turn in 2008 either, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s a decade later. The veteran organizers defied that culture and made history. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven,” says Ecclesiastes. Too many of our leaders don’t know when their season is up. It’s why we have a septuagenarian and an octogenarian running for president in 2024. But here we are. I’m talking about where we go from here.
Want to be a “playah”? Show up willing to do the grunt work. Then keep showing up.
Anderson Clayton is Gen Z. First order of business is a selfie (moments after we first met in person., June 18, 2022).
Where’s change coming from in your state? My friends in their 20s have different sensibilities and cultural touchstones. And a fresher set of skills. So did we at that age. It is the way of things. Get behind the new.
You gotta get yourself together babe Try to keep it cool You wanna make it last forever maybe Get behind the new
Unfortunately, sometimes people have to see the consequences of their actions before it can.
If there’s one issue I’ve sadly become so pessimistic about that I can hardly write about it anymore, it’s guns. The ongoing tragedy of our fetish for the grotesque weapons of war with which so many Americans believe they have a right to play makes me feel like pulling the covers over my head and never coming up for air. I’ve noted the failure of NRA in the last couple of years and they did manage to pass a very tepid gun safety bill in the last congress. But even with that it just seems so hopeless that I’ve lost heart.
But I read a story this morning in the Washington Post that makes me wonder if maybe something might be changing and I’m sharing it with you with a gift link so you can read it too. It’s about four current and three former Senators who have changed their minds. That’s not something I expected to see.
They interviewed these senators who all voted against the bills that were proposed in the wake of the horrific Sandy Hook massacre in 2013. It’s emotionally wrenching to be reminded of that horror and witnessing these Senators confront what they did is quite moving. An excerpt:
It is rare for politicians to shift their viewson policy issues as culturally divisive as gun rights. But the expressions of remorse underscore how the failure to change laws in response to Sandy Hook continues to haunt many who held power at the time — prompting some of them to openly wonder if they allowed short-term political considerations to cloud their judgment on votes that might have saved lives. Obama, addressing Sandy Hook families last year at an event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the shooting, called Congress’s inaction that spring despite his personal lobbying “perhaps the most bitter disappointment of my time in office, the closest I came to being cynical.”
The Democrats have changed, not the Republicans which means that any real change will require the Democrats either winning the White House and the congress with either a filibuster-proof majority or the will to eliminate the filibuster. We’re a long way from that. But this article made me think for the first time in a long time that it might be possible.
Read the whole thing if you have the time. Maybe there is a tiny bit of light at the end of the tunnel?
“It’s my fucking money!” the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner privately vented in October, referring to an alleged sum in the tens of millions of dollars, a source with direct knowledge of the matter tells Rolling Stone.
Trump wasn’t talking about a business deal. Rather, he’s been grumbling about money donated to a think tank his former staffers and allies founded in 2021 to “advance the America First agenda.”
For several months now, according to three people with knowledge of the situation, the former president has complained to an array of confidants and Republicans about the millions raised by the America First Policy Institute, a MAGAfied think tank launched near the start of his post-presidency. The nonprofit is populated by several former high-ranking Trump administration officials, including Larry Kudlow, Rick Perry, and Linda McMahon, and it’s led by Brooke Rollins, who served as a top White House domestic policy aide to Trump. AFPI is one of several Trump-aligned organizations and think tanks working to craft an intellectual framework for hardline policies, ranging from voter crackdowns to potentially invading Mexico.
In the ex-president’s mind, Rollins was making a “killing” off of his name, sources recount, and was stiffing Trump. “It’s not right,” the former president has groused in recent months.
Letting Trump wet his beak with this money would likely be illegal but needless to say, he doesn’t care about that:
AFPI is a tax-exempt, educational nonprofit and is expressly barred under IRS rules from spending money on elections or donating to a political candidate like Trump. Given that Trump is a candidate for office, paying him personally could be seen as attempting to aid a political campaign. One of the experts pointed out that tax-exempt nonprofitsmust also operate for public benefit, and they cannot disproportionately benefit private individuals or pay them more than fair market value for their services.
The way campaign finance laws work these days for Republicans, I doubt it would be a problem. They could just write a check for the whole thing and the FEC would shrug.
He wants a check:
Trump has stated his belief that this money is held in an account by “Brooke,” and that she can easily transfer it to him, personally, if she wanted to do so. In some of his discussions on the topic, Trump has said that he’s willing to settle for “just half” of the haul, two of the people with knowledge of the matter say. He’s suggested he’ll let Rollins off easy, and “she can keep” the rest of the cash.
The reason they will probably succumb to his demand is that all these people are angling for a job in a prospective Trump administration. So they’ll pay him whatever he wants.
Apparently, he won’t shut up about it. He just keeps demanding it, asking lawyers to get involved and refusing to hear their explanations as to why he shouldn’t do it.
No matter how many times this has been explained to the former (and possibly future) leader of the free world, he apparently refuses to accept the logic. He fires back that the only reason the think tank and other MAGA-friendly groups get so many donations is because of Trump’s name and “my brand,” and therefore, he’s entitled to a substantial cut.
I long since stopped believing this is all just a grift. His severe personality disorders (malignant narcissism, pathological lying etc.,) drive him as much as anything, But greed is certainly a motivator and he will take whatever he can get. It’s in his nature.
What’s even weirder, in my opinion, is the apparent eagerness among regular people to give this self-professed billionaire their hard earned money. But that’s one of the most important pieces of evidence supporting the idea that this is a cult not a political movement. One of any cult leader’s greatest skills is parting his followers from their money. Trump requires it as a personal offering to him as a living god. When they don’t do it, it makes him very angry.
Several years ago, when many Democratic strategists were demanding that the party embrace the tenets of the Christian Right in order to win over the salt of the earth, white, Real Americans (whom they insisted were essential to a legitimate governing majority) the media briefly reported on some of their more extreme rituals. They looked at “purity culture” practices such as gay conversion “therapy”, masturbation abstinence and “purity balls” which feature a pseudo wedding ceremony between a father and daughter.
All these practices were disturbing enough that they pretty much went underground after being publicly exposed and the culture wars turned to their next battlefield, the latest being the cruel bullying of transgender teens and banning of gay literature in schools.
There was something particularly creepy about the purity balls. TIME Magazine reported on one of the balls back in 2012, where girls as young as eight or nine don long white dresses and listen to their fathers “promise ‘before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the areas of purity,’ and to practice fidelity, shun pornography and walk with honor through a culture of chaos and by so doing guide their daughters as well.” He promises to protect her “purity of mind, body, and soul”and the girls are given lockets with a key, which the father keeps until the girl gets married at which point they turn it over to her husband. (I guess chastity belts are hard to find these days.)
After dinner comes the ballet performance, when seven tiny ballerinas in white tulle float in; then seven older dancers carry in a large, heavy wooden cross, which they drape in white, with a crown of thorns. Four of the five Wilson daughters are among the dancers, and they offer a special dance to their father, to the music of Natalie Grant: Your faith, your love And all that you believe Have come to be the strongest part of me And I will always be your baby …
Then Randy and his friend Kevin Moore stand in front of the cross, holding up two large swords, points crossed. Fathers and daughters process beneath the swords to kneel; the girls place a white rose, symbolizing abstinence, at the base of the cross while the fathers offer a quiet blessing.
I don’t know if these purity balls have completely gone out of fashion but you don’t hear about them much anymore. At least not until last week, when this story from ABC showed up in our news feeds:
Years before Mike Johnson would ascend to No. 2 in the presidential line of succession, a German TV news outlet profiled the future speaker of the House and his then-teenage daughter.
“This looks like a wedding,” a news reporter says in German in a 2015 n-tv news segment that was unearthed by ABC News. “But they are not bride and groom — but rather father and … daughter,” the reporter adds, referring to Johnson and his then-13-year-old daughter, Hannah.
According to ABC, the segment shows him nodding along as his daughter Hannah vows “to make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future husband, and my future children … to a lifetime of purity, including sexual purity.” That’s quite a pledge to require a 13 year old to take. (Mrs Johnson is shown in the film saying that they don’t even discuss contraception because premarital sex is completely out of the question.)
Is it at all a surprise that Speaker Mike Johnson engaged in this bizarre practice? Of course not. It’s a wonder nobody thought to ask him about it before. After all, he was already on record as a staunch believer in purity culture when he said that he installed so-called accountability software called “Covenant Eyes” on his and his teenage son’s devices so they can catch each other is they ever view pornography. He and his wife have a “covenant marriage” which makes divorce very difficult (and which Johnson tried to make into law when he was in the Louisiana legislature.) He even says God told him he’s Moses chosen to pull Republicans together.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is a fundamentalist with a theocratic agenda that he’s been pursuing for many years. And like so many other Christian nationalist leaders, he’s made common cause with a man one would think a true believer like himself would think was the antichrist. Has the man who forced his little girl to take that purity pledge ever seen this?
Johnson obviously doesn’t care about any of that. He worked with other leaders of the Christian Right to help Trump’s coup attempt in 2020 and raced down to Mar-a-lago the minute he got the speakership to immediately endorse Donald Trump immediately.
As the New Republic pointed out, Johnson has been groomed for power for years by some of the most influential right wing organizations in America, including the secretive Council for National Policy which “journalist Anne Nelson, author of the book on the Council for National Policy, Shadow Network, has described … as ‘the secret hub of the radical right.’ She has also described Johnson as their ‘creation.'” They all, including Mike Johnson, clearly see Donald Trump as a useful tool and nothing more.
Johnson said during a Fox interview, “I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious: What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’” He certainly checks all the boxes, even going so far as the strange rituals of fundamentalist purity culture.
But you know what they say about power corrupting even the most pious of believers. Mike Johnson aligned himself with the most morally corrupt politician to ever run for the presidency and he doesn’t seem in the least bit conflicted by it. Clearly he didn’t take any of his purity pledges seriously at all.
This is a viral pic of DeSantis being interviewed for a podcast. It says it all, doesn’t it? His campaign is falling apart. Any competent advance person should have seen to it that this wouldn’t happen.
And then they went ahead and posted it.
DESANTIS: “I’m going to be a change agent in Washington. I don’t want to be liked in Washington. I don’t care about the media, the bureaucrats, any of that. I want to return this government to We the People.” pic.twitter.com/Jd8gJJvHEX
